Healthy lifestyle can boost brain power

Exercise, diet and social activity can have a real impact on brain health

“Being with people helps reduce the stress level. Loneliness is bad for you,” Jeste said. “You can share your experiences with others and have a support system to help you.”

• Manage stress. Stress prompts the release of hormones like cortisol, which can weaken memory and even damage brain cells.

“There’s good evidence in animal studies that stress produces cognitive decline and doing things that reduce stress can (extend) lives and improve mental functioning,” Plopper said. “(Chronic) stress, depression, anxiety — all of these things will damage the brain if not managed.”

Introducing relaxation techniques such as deep breathing into your daily living can help to defuse the biochemical and physiological reaction to the pending stress. Other forms of stress management can include tai chi, meditation, prayer, visualizations, aerobic exercise, listening to mellow music or writing in a journal.

• Get your sleep. “If we don’t get adequate deep sleep, the memories we capture during that day get erased,” said Bonakdar, noting that the worst thing a student can do is to pull an “all-nighter” preparing for an exam. “All that information can be lost because we need the sleep chemicals produced in deep sleep which mesh new memories with old memories.”

To combat sleeplessness, keep your bedroom cool and dark, avoid alcohol, caffeine and smoking, don’t exercise in the evening and turn off the television and all technology a few hours before you go to bed.

• Manage medical conditions. Chronic diseases that damage the arteries and disrupt blood flow to the brain can also injure the mind.

“Any kind of medical condition in which the body is working overtime, such as elevated blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides or blood sugar, is bad for the brain,” Bonakdar said. “If it affects the vascular system, it affects the brain. Whatever helps the heart, also helps the brain.”

There’s also strong support to the notion that chronic inflammation can reduce cognitive functioning. An active and healthy lifestyle and diet can help boost the immune system and reduce inflammation.

• Halt bad habits. Smoking, drugs and excessive drinking are as bad for the brain as the rest of your body.

Smoking increases the odds of memory loss in later life, but quitting at any age can stop the decline, evidence suggests. In an April 2011 study in the journal NeuroImage, researchers recruited older adults who were smokers and people who had never smoked, and invited the smokers to join a 12-week cessation program. Two years later, the rate of cognitive decline for successful quitters was similar to that of participants who never smoked, but those who were unable to quit declined more than those in either group.

One drink a day for women and two for men is associated with reductions in cognitive decline and the risk of dementia. However, if you don’t drink, this is no reason to start, Jeste said.

Heavy drinking can diminish memory by changing chemicals in the brain and causing deficiencies in vitamin B1 (thiamin). Several studies also report greater brain shrinkage among alcoholics.